I made the long, 1100km journey from Berlin to Warsaw and back – frivolously perhaps – to visit Fryderyk Chopin's birthplace at Zelazowa Wola, 50km to the west. Effectively the train journey was free, as I was travelling in Europe on a rail pass, but I did pay a sleeper supplement, a hotel bill and a meal or two. The local journey from Warsaw was not without incident, but finally I found myself on a tired old No.6 bus from the train station at Sochaczew to the loosely defined village of Zelazowa Wola, 7km away. The driver dropped me outside the entrance to the Narodowy Instytut Frederyka Chopina at opening time, 09:00... / more

Highlights

The house in which Chopin was born, at the end of February 1810, is set in a park which at the time was part of the estate of Count Skarbek. Mr and Mrs Chopin moved into the house after their wedding in 1806, but moved again soon afterwards to Warsaw, towards the end of 1810. Nevertheless the house has now almost gained the status of a national sanctuary...

After checking in to my hotel, 1km west along Al Jerozolimskie from Warsaw's Centralna station, I went out to see if there was anything worth photographing in the neighbourhood. Not a lot, actually, but I moved towards and round the hated communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, finding some images of a few other tall buildings on the way. Some pleasant and very welcome sunshine while I was out.

I was out of the Chopin house and the park at Zelazowa Wola by 10:00. Back in Warsaw, after such a short and disappointing time in Zelazowa Wola, I might have tried to get to the main Frederyk Chopin Museum at Ostrogski Castle – which would probably have been more interesting to me than suggested by the Rough Guide – except that the contact page of the website had told me (before I left home) that it would be closed from 18 May 2008 to 1 March 2010 for major renovation work. But that's not the point. In my opinion the museum at Chopin's birthplace should be about the life of the man: his family, when did he leave, how often did he come back to the area, what did his sisters do...

So for me my trip to Warsaw was somewhat of a waste of time, both photographically and musically. And I also found the house rather unwelcoming. But I have no regrets about making the long journey to get there, despite the cost and time; my Grand Tour was about the travel experience as well as about photography and music.